Sunday, June 15, 2008

How to Disable Nero Scout in Nero 7

Disable Nero Scout in Nero 7

The latest version of the Nero CD/DVD burning suite, Nero 7, installs a media database component called Nero Scout. This also adds several entries to your Windows startup, including NmBgMonitor.exe and NMFirstStart.exe which can hog system resources. Nero Scout has also been reported to cause all sorts of problems in Windows and with Nero.

It should be noted that NmBgMonitor.exe and NMFirstStart.exe are not spyware.
What does Nero Scout do?

Ahead Software, the makers of Nero, have a web page for Nero Scout which can be viewed here.

Basically, the program is a media indexer. It constantly runs in the background, looking for new media files, i.e. MP3s, videos, and photos. When it finds such a file, it adds it to its own internal database. The database is used by other Nero programs, such as Wave Editor, Burning ROM, and PhotoSnap. The only purpose for the database is to give you a more convenient way to access those media files, without having to navigate the folders on your hard drive.

Unless you are a hard-core user of all of Nero's programs, Nero Scout is a useless piece of software bloat.
How do I get rid of Nero Scout?

The first thing to do is to disable Nero Scout via its own interface. To do so, double-click on the My Computer icon. Right-click on the Nero Scout icon and choose Options. Then uncheck the option for Enable Nero Scout.

Reboot your PC and see if you are still experiencing problems. If you are, and you are running Nero 7, you can also perform the following actions:

Click on the Start button and choose Run. Type the following line exactly as it appears:

regsvr32 /u "%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Ahead\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll"

Then click OK and reboot your PC.

We hope that future versions of Nero will make it easier to disable system resource hogs like this program. Otherwise, Ahead Software will start to see their loyal fan base disappear.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Turn NumLock on at logon

NumLock does not toggle on by default (system-wide), even if you have it set in your PC's BIOS, because of XP's multi-user functionality. Guess Microsoft doesn't know everyone actually turns it on, which should be reason enough for what acts as "default"...

Anyway, you can hack the Windows Registry to change this behavior, or run a script at logon to turn NumLock on.

1. To enable NumLock through the Registry:

* Open Windows' Registry Editor (START > RUN, type "REGEDIT").
*. Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard.
*. Change the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators from 0 to 2.

2. To enable NumLock using a script, see this MS Knowledgebase article for complete instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q262625

Option 1 is the quicker method, but if you have more than one user on your system and one or more don't want NumLock on (stranger things have been known of), then option 2 is the way to go since it allows you to only attach the script to specific users.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Decrease system loading time by changing network settings

Decrease system loading time by changing network settings

When you start up your computer and you are connected to a LAN and your computer is set to DHCP and your computer has to search for the DHCP server and then request and IP address and all other configuration. This process takes up some time and slows down the time it takes to boot the computer up. Following the directions below will help your set a static IP address. Even if your ISP says to use DHCP this tweak may still work for you, but you are warnned!

1. Click Start and click on Run.
2. Type command in the text box and click OK.
3. In DOS, type ipconfig and hit enter.
4. This will show you your current IPs that your NIC and PPPoE adapters have. Only pay attention to your Ethernet Card Adapter, not to the PPP adapter.
5. Next, right click My Network Places and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will open up the Network Connections window. In here, locate your Local Area Network connection and right click it, select Properties from the drop down menu.
6. When the next Window that opens up, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties at the bottom.
7. In the next window, click 'Use the following IP Address'. This is where that DOS window comes in handy. Copy the same exact IP Address from your Ethernet card (in the dos window) and place it where it says IP Address. Same goes for the Subnet Mask and Default Gateway. If your Default Gateway is blank, then just leave it blank. Click Ok, then Ok again.
8. In the DOS window type exit dos then enter. Reboot your machine.

Now there is absolutely NO loading. You can connect as soon as you see your desktop.

Quick Note: If you use DHCP (Dynamic IP Address) to connect to the net, you may find that your net connection does not work after this. So if some day your network connection stops working, just go back into the NIC card properties and select automatically get IP address and reboot.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation

How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation

Even on a 2 GB RAM workstation (as mine) VMware virtual machines can run slowly. Too slowly sometimes.

This can depend on a large amount of factors but we can reduce the number to 4 critical issues:

Antivirus real-time protection You probably run VMware Workstation on your everyday working computer, and you probably want to stay secure running an antivirus software. The most useful feature of any AV is the real-time protection, catching and monitoring I/O accesses of every process for suspicious activities. This feature can greatly impact on your VMs performances and should be fine-tuned for virtualization. So be sure to create an exclusion filter on your real-time protection settings for .vmdk (VMware virtual disk) and .vmem (VMware virtual memory) files. In this way countinous I/O operations on your virtual machines will not be hit by antivirus checking. Note: if you plan to run liveCD operating systems (like Knoppix) inside your VMs or simply often use CD images for installing new software, I highly recommend to exclude .iso files too from AV checking.
HostOS disk fragmentation A really performance hitter for virtual machines is a fragmented host OS disk. VMs virtual disks are very large (4 GBs at minimum on the average) and are created by default as non preallocated. In other words your virtual disk grow as you install more software on the guest OS till reaching your defined disk limit. If you use only one physical disk for everyday work and VMs storing, you probably will use space around a growing virtual disk, obliging your host OS to fragment virtual machines more and more. So be sure to:
- Create a dedicated partition for virtual machines only
- Create guest OSes virtual disks with Allocate all disk space now option
- Schedule a daily defragmentation for your virtual machines directories (maybe at launch time or during the night)
Memory trimming Workstation checks which part of the guest OS virtual memory is not used and allocates it back to the host OS. This permits to have more concurrent virtual machines running but everytime the guest OS asks back for its memory it suffers a performance degradation. So, if you have enough free RAM for all planned concurrent VMs, be sure to disable memory trimming for guest OSes adding the following line to the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file: MemTrimRate=0 Note: Memory trimming can be disabled through GUI since Workstation 6.0.
Page sharing (quoted from VMware documentation) VMware uses a page sharing technique to allow guest memory pages with identical contents to be stored as a single copy-on-write page. Page sharing decreases host memory usage, but consumes system resources, potentially including I/O bandwidth. You may want to avoid this overhead for guests for which host memory is plentiful and I/O latency is important. To disable page sharing, add the following line to the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file: sched.mem.pshare.enable=FALSE option

These suggestions will work well for every VMware Workstation 5.x and Player 1.x since both share same engine.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Control Panel Run Shortcut

The Run dialog gives you easy access to many different programs and options. To get to the Run dialog, click the Start button, then click Run. Type in the command and press Enter, to launch it. For example, type "control folders" (without the quotes) in the Run dialog and press ENTER. Here is a list of commands to use, and what they do:

control - Control Panel
control folders - Folder Options
control userpasswords - User Accounts
control userpasswords2 - Advanced User Accounts
control desktop - Display Properties
control printers - Printers and Faxes
control mouse - Mouse Properties
control keyboard - Keyboard Properties
control netconnections - Network Connections
control color - Display Properties \ Screensaver
control date/time - Date and Time Properties
control schedtasks - Scheduled Tasks
control admintools - Administrative Tools
control telephony - Phone and Modem Options
control fonts - Fonts Folder
control international - Regional and Language

Sunday, May 25, 2008

How to Remove Startup Items located in the registry

Removing startup items from registry

The System Configuration Utility displays items that start with your PC. These items are generally located in one of two areas. The registry or in Common Startup.

Should you decide to prevent specific items from starting up you can uncheck them in the System Configuration Utility. Though this method is fine it is ultimately best to remove them from the source. To access the common registry locations of these items take a look in the following areas:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

If you have disabled items in the System Configuration Utility and would like to remove them from the registry also they can be found in one of the following locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SharedTools\MSConfig\startupfolder
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig\startupreg

Note: Always make a backup of the Registry prior to making changes. TweakXP.com takes no responsibility for problems that may result from using the Registry Editor incorrectly.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

How to Define multiple NetBIOS names for a machine

Define multiple NetBIOS names for a machine.

This would be useful if, for instance, you wanted to migrate a number of shares to a different machine and rather than having to switch all clients to the new machine instantly you could define the new machine to also answer to the old machines NetBIOS name and then slowly migrate the machines. To define extra names for a machine perform the following:

Start the registry editor (regedt32.exe)
Move to HKEY_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
From the Edit menu select "Add Value"
Set the type to REG_SZ is you want one extra name or REG_MULTI_SZ if you want more than one and enter a name of OptionalNames. Click OK
You will then be prompted for a value. Enter the other name (or names if type REG_MULTI_SZ, one on each line) you want it to be known as and click OK.
Close the registry editor
Reboot the machine
There may be a WINS resolution problem. The entries for the additional NetBIOS names will have been dynamically added to the WINS database complete with IP number. However, a "real" server machine in the WINS dbase normally has three WINS entries, 00h, 03h and 20h. Your aliases may only have one, 03h. Therefore you may need to add static entries for the additional NetBIOS names, which created all three entries. You should now be able to ping by NetBIOS name.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Miscelleneous windows tips

Windows XP Tips and tricks
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/tips_page.htm

Nice site having huge archive of windows tips and tricks

iexpress - to create installer package (built into the windows natively)

Wndows forgotten password recovery methods

http://www.google.co.in/notebook/public/06626596722439644610/BDQNsIgoQzrqk-Ioi

Setup FTP Server on home computer

http://www.google.co.in/notebook/public/13533147217413439515/BDR-pLAoQrv6MuL8h

To check if PAE is enabled on a system or not:-
reg query "\\\HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v "PhysicalAddressExtension

To Query all the installed softwares on a system:-
reg query \\computer name>\hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\uninstall /s /v "DisplayName" |findstr "DisplayName"

How to disable compress folders in windows

Are the ZIP folders too slow for you? Disable it by unregistering the file zipfldr.dll.
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Auto logon in Windows XP

Enable Auto logon

Go to Start>Run and type "control userpasswords2"
then select the user you want for auto logon.

Disable AutoLogon
Bypass Auto Logon at startup
By default, MSGina.dll checks the state of the SHIFT key when AutoAdminLogon is 1. If the SHIFT key is held down during the boot process, MSGina.dll will ignore the AutoAdminLogon key value and prompt the user for identification and authentication information interactively. You can use this method to temporarily disable automatic logon at startup.

Easy method to clear Auto Logon entry
Go to Start>Run and type "rundll32 netplwiz.dll,ClearAutoLogon"

Registry Method
Use this method only if you've configured the automatic logon using the registry manually. Because, automatic logon procedure using Control Userpasswords2 or using Tweak UI does not involve Winlogon \ DefaultPassword key at all. They are stored in protected area rather.